The curse has been broken. The Chicago Cubs finally won a World Series, securing the championship in 10th inning of game 7. Hats off to the Cleveland Indians who had a fantastic run throughout the month of October.

With this World Series being so significant to Chicago Cub fans [and also Cleveland Indian fans] around the United States, STR (parent company of Hotel News Now) decided to dive into both the markets to see who in the hotel industry benefitted more from the World Series.

Demand
First, we took a look at the percent change in demand for hotel rooms in those markets. Every game had an impact of more than 25% demand increase except for game 5 in Chicago, which saw demand decline by about 0.4%. Game 5 was on a Sunday night and the Indians had a 3-1 lead on the Cubs. It appears that Chicago fans weren’t as willing to spend a lot of money and take off work Monday to see the Cubs potentially lose the series. Additionally, game 5 was the day before Halloween, which typically sees reduced travel, as our recent analysis showed.

While games 3 and 4 in Chicago saw the highest hotel demand growth, it appears Cleveland actually saw more demand growth over the entire series.